A Lost Afternoon
by an-extraordinary-muse
Summary: "Gibbs sent up a silent prayer of thanks: he had lost one family, but gained another. They were not alone, and neither was he."  Jethro spends some well earned time with his kids.


_**Author's Note: I don't know where this came from; I started it a few days ago and just kept working on it here and there. Apparently my muse has decided to flood me with ideas for stand alone's, but is stubbornly absent when it comes time to give me inspiration with my works-in-progress. Strange. Anyway, this fic focuses mainly on Gibbs and his thoughts, but there is some good Gibbs/Ziva father/daughter moments, as well as implied TIVA and McABBY. I hope you'll take the time to review and let me know what you think - I look forward to hearing what you have to say!**_

_**Spoilers: None. **_

_**Disclaimer: Not mine, blah blah blah ...**_

* * *

><p>Jethro was secretly a sentimental man. He rarely brought attention to this fact, and if his team had ever noticed then they knew better to call him out on it.<p>

Sometimes, his propensity for sentimentality surprised him. He had been certain that it disappeared with the loss of his family, and for many years he knew that it had. It had been gone long enough, in fact, that its sudden silent return had escaped his notice for sometime.

He blamed it on Abby; she had been the surprise that restarted his decimated heart.

The cheery Goth had been at NCIS almost longer than he had; he would never admit to it, but he had been hesitant to interact with her the first time they'd had occasion to work together; it hadn't had anything to do with how she looked or how fast she talked, but her undying optimism that had made him wary. Jethro had still been hurting during that time, his tattered heart still wrapped in the iron of indifference. Almost from the moment they'd met, however, he had known that it wouldn't take Abby long to circumvent his defenses and plant herself in his heart. She was damn near impossible not to like.

He had been mildly surprised to find how quickly they clicked, especially in her case. They were polar opposites, and yet that difference seemed to work for rather than against them. Slowly, as they got to know one another and learned each other's quirks, Jethro had felt as though he'd found a surrogate daughter. That had (surprisingly) worked for her too, so close to the loss of her father.

In many ways, Abby had saved him from a cold and bitter life.

Tony and Tim had been unintentional. Tony was a pain in the ass: he had good instincts and a propensity for being stubborn and even downright annoying at times. When Gibbs had swiped him from Baltimore, he'd been young enough to need guidance and old enough to know it; it was only when Gibbs had been afraid of losing him to the plague that he'd realized that he'd come to think of Tony as a son. That worked for him too, because Tony's real father had left such a terrible hole in his absence.

Tim was a challenge. Everything about him screamed sweetness, and at first Jethro had been worried that the job would be too much for him. He was Tony's perfect foil, and that had worried Jethro at first too. The college athlete and ultimate geek: Gibbs had been surprised that they even spoke to one another. Over the years, however, he had felt pride in watching the way Tim came along, and in the way Tony helped him get there. They were like brothers in his eyes, sometimes bickering and chiding and driving him crazy, but always steadfast and dependable. Tim was the only one he had to worry about being too harsh with.

Kate … Kate had been easy. She'd made herself easy to care for with her earnestness, and ended up in that little box in the dark corners of his heart and mind with Shannon and Kelly. He had felt responsible for Kate – in life and in death – and her loss was another one that sat heavy on his shoulders. There had been such goodness in her, so much open determination to prove herself that he'd worried she might burn herself out for the job. Out of all them, she had been the most like Tim, and maybe even Abby.

He should have known then: if Abby was a surprise, Tim and Tony unintentional and Kate easy, Jethro should have known then that he had a knack for stringing a family together out of misfit toys. He hadn't been looking for one – at least, not consciously, anyway – but he'd made a habit of drawing them in.

So, really, he should have been ready for her; he should have been, but he wasn't.

Ziva had swept in on Kate's heels, and she'd been a punch to the gut. He had taken to his team, his "kids", with ease; that ease was nothing, however, when compared with how he'd taken to Ziva. The death of her brother at her own hands had saved his life, and that alone would have been enough for him. Their similarities had been glaringly apparent, however, and it was those similarities that felt like a punch to the gut. They shared the same capacity for darkness, even outfitted themselves with the same silent indifference to help them move through a world they weren't certain they belonged in. As the team had gotten to know her, Gibbs had understood that where his reasons for how he was were heartbreaking, hers were downright horrifying.

So his family had knitted itself back together after the loss of Kate, and over the years Gibbs had watched quietly as Ziva brought in a dynamic wholly different than the one Kate had brought. He watched as the Israeli slowly wormed her way into the hearts of his team, their wariness (and intimidation) wearing off as they learned to trust and respect her. She was an asset, a weapon, a larger than life assassin in a deceptively little package; she was an arsenal of death and a font of life.

For all of their collective hurts, Ziva was the most like him; Abby was his favorite, but he felt the most connected to Ziva.

Now here she stood, not five feet in front of him in the warm lighting of his basement on a beautiful Saturday afternoon, her face crestfallen despite the beauty just outside his window. She was so obviously in pain that he didn't even bother to ask her why she had sought him out – he merely watched her as she ran a small finger down one of the ribs of his latest boat. She obviously wanted to talk – she would not have come if there wasn't something she wanted to say – but he knew his Israeli well enough to know not to push.

Instead, he motioned to the other end of the wooden frame that was perched in front of his feet.

"Make yourself useful." His tone wasn't gruff – he made sure of that – and she moved automatically to take hold of the object.

"Where is it going?"

"Outside. Back yard. Careful up the stairs."

He let her lead, careful not to push her off balance as they hauled the awkwardly shaped frame up the stairs and out through his kitchen. They had to pause at the doorway and readjust, tilting it forward and down just enough that they could slide it out without damaging the doorframe. He motioned with his head to put it off to the right; they set it up and took a simultaneous step back to observe their placement.

Satisfied, Gibbs led the way back downstairs for the rest of the pieces. If Ziva was curious what they were doing she didn't show it, and he didn't volunteer an explanation; she would see soon enough.

They worked in silence for another half an hour, retrieving the assorted pieces and then trekking back outside with them. Once he had everything together, the actual assembly only took a matter of minutes. He had finished it last night and only decided that morning to put it on his back porch.

"It is a swing, yes?" His agent queried, scanning the completed project.

"A porch swing," He elaborated, "Shannon loved them."

He hadn't meant to say the last part – his family was not something he was in the habit of talking about. Whether by chance or fate, the mention of his first wife seemed to be the perfect thing to say: the sound of her name seemed to rattle something loose in the woman next to him, and her small frame almost curled in on itself with the weight of her thoughts.

"Is it safe?"

He gave a half nod and motioned for her to try it out; she seated herself on the cushion, a summery pale blue that accented the dark varnish he had chosen at the last minute. She held herself still for a minute before relaxing into it, apparently decided that it wasn't going to collapse underneath her. On a whim, he disappeared into the house and snagged them two beers from the fridge before joining her on the swing. She accepted the beer with the ghost of a smile and took a sip; he was about to ask her what had brought her here when she beat him to the punch.

"When we were children, my mother used to sing us a lullaby. Every night, no matter how long or tiring her day had been, she would come into our rooms and sing to us until we fell asleep."

Ziva fell silent for a long moment. She took a swig of her beer while Gibbs tried to picture a young Ziva waiting impatiently for her mother; he even sidestepped his hatred of Ari long enough to try and picture him as a young child, but found that he couldn't.

"After my mother died, Ari would sing to Tali whenever she woke up crying for her. He would hold her and tell her how much our mother had loved her; he would tell her stories until she smiled, and then he would put her back to bed."

Jethro didn't know what to say to that, but she didn't seem to be expecting an answer. He would not pretend that he hadn't hated her brother – the man who had assassinated Kate and then come back to do the same to him – but he was a big enough man to grieve for the child that Ziva was now describing.

"He was not always a monster, Gibbs." Her voice was soft, quiet and distant in that way that he had come to recognize whenever she was trying to rein in a particularly potent emotion. "Before he murdered Kate; before he went rogue; before he was Mossad, he was just a little boy – the brother who would sing to us when we had nightmares."

Gibbs could feel the hurt radiating off of her in waves – he knew it an recognized it as a pain similar to his own, the grief of the loss of a loved one; he could identify with the dark, choking emotion that had her in its grip.

"He was my brother. He was my brother, and I killed him."

Her bottom lip quivered and he knew she was crying before the first tear had fallen. He reached for her automatically, wrapping an arm around her slim shoulders and pulling her into his side. To his latent surprise, she didn't resist the contact; instead she let herself be pulled, even going so far as tucking her head into his shoulder. She didn't sob, but he felt the tears as they dropped onto his shirt; he felt their weight as they soaked into the material there, burning their way into his heart.

Their pain may have been similar, but sometimes Gibbs allowed himself to forget the horror of hers. Sometimes, he didn't want to remember what the price of his life had cost her.

"I do not regret saving your life," She said into his chest, in an oh-so-soft voice, "But sometimes I regret taking his. I loved him, Gibbs, all the way until the end. I despised what he had become, hated him for what he had done, but even still …"

"He was your brother," Gibbs finished, squeezing her shoulders to show his support, to let her know that he understood. "Of course you loved him."

"What if he did not know? What if he died believing that his family hated him?"

Sometimes, in dark moments alone with his thoughts, Gibbs would find his pain and his grief practically seeping out of him; he would find himself pacing his living room because he absolutely had to do something, or the buildup would stagger him. Even after all these years, he would still catching himself expecting to hear Kelly's laugh, or thinking that he should ask Shannon her opinion on this or that inconsequential thing. Ziva's loss was much more recent, and she had the added weight of knowing that her brother's death had come at her own hand. He recognized what was happening now as a momentary break, a lapse in the ability of her defensive walls to keep it all contained. He saw it for what it was, and held her all the more tightly because of it; for just this small slip of time, she could let herself float away because he would be her tether. For as long as she was willing to take it, he would offer her the stability to fall apart.

Sometimes, he knew, the only way to keep yourself together was to fall apart; the only way to appreciate the light was to wrap yourself in shadows.

"… I sang to him," She was recanting. "After … when you left. I sat beside him in your basement and sang to him, just like he used to do for Tali, for me. I sang to him and prayed that he would find peace. Perhaps he did not deserve it, but I have to believe that he found it."

There was nothing he could say that would make her feel better, and he doubted she would have heard him even if he'd tried. Instead he placed a gentle kiss to the top of her head and set the swing in motion. With one foot he pushed them in slow, soothing motions, back and forth, back and forth.

Ziva's tears had stopped dampening his shirt by the time he decided on something that might help. Without a word he fished his cell phone out of his pocket, trying his best not to dislodge the woman pressed into his side. He knew she was still awake because she adjusted ever so slightly, but for once seemed content to share physical affection.

That alone was enough to tell him how upset she was.

He hit the button that automatically dialed Tony and waited.

"We got a body, Boss?" Tony answered on the third ring.

"Nope. We got a grill and a six pack, DiNozzo – we're gonna need brats and burgers. Tell McGee to bring the beer."

"Brats and … boss?" Tony sounded lost.

"And don't forget to call Abby."

"Right. On it, boss."

"Do you have plans, Gibbs?" Ziva queried when he had hung up.

"Nope. We do."

* * *

><p>Looking at his backyard now, Gibbs knew that his backyard had been empty for too long. The air was permeated with the smell of grilling meat and he was reminded of how much he used to enjoy summer barbecues. He had opted to watch the grill and stood now with a bottle in one hand a spatula in the other; in the grass not far from him, Abby had talked Ziva into letting her paint her nails while Tim and Tony argued over something that sounded like it had to do with computers. Ziva looked decidedly less upset, which he was very glad to see – Abby was talking in her usual mile-a-minute way, and her sunny optimism seemed to be having an affect on the Israeli.<p>

His family looked so relaxed and natural under the summer sun that he couldn't help feeling that much more at ease himself. Their days were full of death and lies and grueling legwork; they were always putting themselves in the line of fire to bring peace and closure to others. They had chosen that life, each one of them, and he was proud of the work they did. Still, he was immensely thankful for this lost afternoon of sunshine and companionship. He was thankful to know that in this moment his team was happy, and together, and safe.

Gibbs took a pull from his beer bottle and flipped the burgers – they were almost done. His thoughts were pulled back to the last time he had barbecued with Shannon and Kelly – it had been the summer before that last deployment, and he'd painted a smiley face with ketchup on Kelly's burger. She'd laughed and told him she didn't want to eat his picture; he'd promised to draw her another one that she didn't have to eat.

He could not bring Shannon and Kelly back; he could not heal Ziva's pain or make Tony's father see how much he was missing out on; he could not give Abby or Tim their families back. All he could do was let them know that they were not alone; he could surround them with the people that loved and accepted them, no matter their differences or past mistakes. He could show them that for all that they were missing, they were also blessed with many things.

When he turned to observe them again, Abby had laid her head in McGee's lap and Ziva had leaned back to brace herself against Tony's chest. Gibbs was not a fool: he knew that Rule Twelve was obsolete, had known for a while, and while he had the experience to be worried about possible consequences, he also had the presence of mind to keep quiet about it. Everyone needed a code to live by, but the code would not be the same for everyone. He wanted his family to be happy in this life, wanted them to have a source of joy to combat the darkness that surrounded them all. If they could be professional about it, then so could he.

"Everything alright, boss?" Tony called then.

"Why wouldn't it be, Tony?"

The use of his first name seemed to catch him off guard, but he covered the surprise quickly; Ziva had not moved from her spot against his chest.

"You're smiling, boss."

"Yeah, so?"

Tony narrowed his eyes at him in consideration, then just smiled and shrugged.

Gibbs sent up a silent prayer of thanks: he had lost one family, but gained another. They were not alone, and neither was he.

Oh yes, Jethro was a sentimental man, and he had a feeling that he would call on the memory of this day in all the dark ones yet to come; he would recall the image of his kids splayed contentedly in the grass whenever he needed to remember why they subjected themselves to such darkness.

Behind him Ziva laughed, a light, tinkling laugh that sounded strangely like Kelly's.


End file.
